Computers are magnificent tools for the realization of our dreams,
but no machine can replace the human spark of spirit,
compassion, love, and understanding.
Louis Gerstner
Louis Gerstner
On Thursday, April 8th 2010, I'll be hosting a discussion, a share-meet if you will, as my first presentation at the IATEFL conference in Harrogate.
The title:
Crowd Wise
The participants
Anyone running an online community with students, teachers or other educators.
The blurb
A brief presentation of psychological, historical and evolutionary aspects of real-life tribal communities followed by a swap-shop reviewing the key roles of e-participants; discussing group life cycles, net-i-quette issues and conflict resolution; a comparison of web platforms and sharing tips for accessing the wisdom of the crowd.
Many of us who run e-communities have paths that cross frequently (on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn or even in each others communities) however, we very rarely get an opportunity to sit down face-to-face and say
"Hey, xyz works really well in my community but you know, I tried abc - which I saw mnopq do well, but oddly enough it didn't for us... what about in your group, did you try? Oh you did fgh instead? Great concept..."
So, in a series of posts running from now until end March, I thought I'd begin to explore some of the subjects we'll be chatting about, on this blog, and that way I can get to know more of your thoughts and access your wisdom; see what's most pressing, what's not such a big deal (limited time there and all that) and then feed these into the session... plus your comments would also help to create the discussion cards!
Topics include:
The 10min Presentation
- Animal/human evolution and the move towards the creation of tribes
- The psychology and historical implications behind forming tribes and creating tribal roles
- The relationship between community positions in Real Life versus roles in our Online Lives.
The 45min Swap-Shop
- Online platforms
- Group identity
- Individual identity
- Roles
- Collaboration, invention and working together
- Life cycles of Groups
- Differences in working with learners vs educators
- Tribes and cash
In my next postings, I'll be highlighting each of the above as individual postings and I'll link back as I go through each for a more concentrated discussion.
Have I missed any core topics? Got a question? Don't hesitate to add your thoughts!
The process
1. Blog posts from today until end March
2. Discussion at IATEFL
3. Summary based on swap-shop
4. Free pdf available: blog posts (selected comments included + notes from conference
Best,
Karenne
updated 13.02.10
The video mentioned by Elizabeth Anne below in the comments is
PBS Frontline, Digital Nation: Life on the virtual frontier
Posts
Hi Karenne,
I will certainly try and come to this workshop, if it isn't at the same time as mine! Looks very interesting, and good idea to do a blog post series on this. Helps prepare for the talk in doses, doesn't it?
Would love to have you! Yup, I thought if we're going to discuss crowd wisdom then it should be based on crowd wisdom - what better way of accessing that than through my blog :-)
Also stops me from being nervous 'bout it - cause I'll (maybe) get a feel for what subjects are most interesting to people!
K
Hi Karenne,
I'll try to be there too. Would be great to meet you in person.
Steph
You too! :-) Am looking forward to doing all this accessing crowdwisdom stuff in F2F. As technie as I am I do think that certain discussions are somewhat more indepth when personal.
Dunno, could be me.
PPS
Oh oh - I seem to have given the wrong link (though an interesting one) here's the whole link to the documentary
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/digitalnation/view/?utm_campaign=viewpage&utm_medium=grid&utm_source=grid
Hi Karenne,
I'll also be at the conference and will do my best to make it to your session, hope you'll be able to do the same.
Hi ya, Adam - looking forward to it - what'ya presenting?
K
Elizabeth,
Thanks so much for coming back with this great link - am listening to the documentary as I write you back (oops, multi-tasking, promise twitter's not on)
I do worry about the dumbing-down but at the same time I'm also kinda lovin' the ability to do this (at my age) and I'm not entirely, entirely convinced that it is "dumbing down" - it's just different intelligence, isn't it.
There have been so many shifts in consciousness and processing information throughout our evolution and we may just be in the midst of another one.
We may have lost the ability to learn entire stories off by heart, but have our lives suffered because of this loss - we don't know, because we don't know what we never knew.
(oh, they're talking about brain scans right now - I need to wrap this up so I can see the screen)
Digital immigrant... yea, you only need a guidebook.
Bye - and thanks so much for dropping by and sharing your ideas and experiences with me!
Karenne